


what i would give

by achilleees



Category: Black Panther (2018), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-08
Updated: 2019-02-08
Packaged: 2019-10-24 15:17:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17706710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/achilleees/pseuds/achilleees
Summary: “Hey,” Tony said. “Your mom said it would be okay if I borrowed some of your clothes?”In that moment, T’Challa was struck with the most conflicting sense of lust and regret and irritation and yearning so intense it destabilized him. Tony in his clothes – it was something out of his earliest fantasies, something he’d wanted before he realized whatwantingwas.





	what i would give

**Author's Note:**

> imagine a world where t'challa is less rich and tony is less smart than canon.
> 
> there's some Xhosa in this that i got from google translate. please tell me if it's incorrect and i will happily change it.

Tony Stark moved to T’Challa’s neighborhood midway through seventh grade.

He was a quiet boy, then, with huge brown eyes and a smile that didn’t meet them. He was delicate, fine-boned, in a way that made their gym teacher despair, though that all changed when they ran their first timed mile and he whooped everyone else on the track without breaking a sweat.

They were never really friends, because T’Challa had Okoye and W’Kabi and that was enough for him. Still, sometimes he saw Tony reading across the room, or saw him walking home from the bus stop, and he was tempted to stop and say something.

But then he remembered the gleaming silver Mercedes that dropped Tony off for school some mornings, the brand new sneakers he wore, the iPhone he carried in his pocket, the grandeur of the townhouse W’Kabi had pointed out as the Starks’ while they were walking to 7-11 one day. And his throat would tighten up and he would think, probably better not.

 

But then Tony went and got hot in the summer before ninth grade and everything changed.

He grew half a foot, got these shoulders and abs, learned to walk with a purpose. Suddenly the girls that had ignored him were flirting with him in the cafeteria, the boys who had brushed him off were inviting him over to play video games after school.

Tony didn’t put up much of a fight, and within months he’d been absorbed completely by the so-called popular crowd, hanging out with them at the mall, hosting pool parties, getting louder and bolder at school, though his smile still didn’t meet his eyes.

They _really_ weren’t friends then, because Tony’s idiot white friends were all dicks to T’Challa and Okoye and W’Kabi in a way that Tony passively enabled even if he didn’t take part himself. When T’Challa saw Tony picking up take-out in his family’s restaurant or walking home from the bus stop, he turned away.

 

Then Tony got his ass expelled in tenth grade. No one really knew what happened, though rumors flew – alcohol, weed, disorderly conduct. Some people said he brought a gun to school, which T’Challa never believed. Tony was a douche, but he wasn’t that kind of douche.

He went away, and his parents sold the townhouse, and T’Challa figured he would never see Tony Stark again.

And once he was gone, it was easier to admit to himself that he’d always kind of liked Tony, liked the lazy curl of his smile even after it stopped being so shy and sweet, liked the way he laughed even when it was at T’Challa’s expense. He’d liked Tony back when he was sweet and shy and he couldn’t help but like Tony when he wasn’t, and if that made him an idiot, at least he’d never done anything about it.

Rumors still trickled down here and there – people said that Tony went away to a posh boarding school in New England; that he got expelled from that one also; that he was dealing Percocet to B-list celebrities; that he was arrested at his own house party for possession of a controlled substance.

“That poor Stark boy,” T’Challa’s mother said of him once, which surprised him.

“You feel sorry for him?” T’Challa had asked, incredulous. “You hate boys like that.”

Ramonda had sighed. “No boy that age should have been living at home with just the maid. It’s not right.”

T’Challa went quiet, because he’d known that but he’d never really internalized it – how damaging that could be for the psyche of a young boy.

“I always wanted you to be his friend so we could invite him over more, but it never seemed to happen,” she said. “And now it doesn’t matter.”

T’Challa swallowed guiltily, feeling like he’d done something wrong this whole time.

“Oh, it was not your fault,” his mother said, reading his expression. “I never wanted you to feel pressured to be friends just because the boy came from a troubled household. But I always wondered if things would have been different if you had.”

“Yeah,” said T’Challa quietly. After that, the idea festered in his mind like a virus.

 

Then, on the first day of freshman year at Princeton, T’Challa walked into his room for the first time and found Tony Stark lying in one of the beds.

And the very worst part was, Tony didn’t recognize him at all.

 

“Oh, hey,” Tony said, standing up when he came in. “I’m Tony Stark – you must be…?” He looked expectantly at T’Challa.

T’Challa stared at him.

“This is the part where you tell me your name,” Tony said.

“T’Challa,” T’Challa said, a little too aggressively. “It’s T’Challa.”

“Cool,” Tony said with a slightly quizzical brow furrow. “T’Challa. Nice to meet you.”

“Yeah,” T’Challa said.

 

They didn’t talk much after that. Tony puttered around on his computer for a while, then left with a bunch of the other incoming freshmen to join some… _DisOrientation_ party T’Challa had no interest in attending.

Tony came back drunk and listing on his feet, passing out on top of his covers with his shoes on, and T’Challa stared up at the ceiling with his eyes opened and wondered why this was the boy his heart had decided to latch onto and never let go.

 

T’Challa had to leave early the next day for the first meeting of the swim team, then he attended an optional orientation session about consent and safe sex, then an ice cream social and a tour of the library after that. He ate lunch with people from his orientation group, then went with them a workshop on honing your organizational and time management skills. He didn’t see Tony once all day.

When he came back to the room, Tony had built a loft.

T’Challa stopped dead, looking up at where Tony’s bed now stood mounted over his desk, freeing up space for the entertainment center where he now sat with another boy playing some fighting game on the TV.

“If I do yours too, we can put in a workout bench,” Tony said without looking up.

“Sure,” T’Challa said.

“Brilliant,” Tony said. “Did you have a good day at school?”

T’Challa didn’t grace that with a response, going to his bed and dropping his backpack onto it. He watched them play for a moment, the way their fingers moved nimbly over the controllers.

“Hey,” said the other boy when the bout ended and there was a pause. “I’m James.”

“Rhodey,” Tony corrected.

“James,” said James.

“T’Challa,” T’Challa replied.

“Genuinely, I don’t think Tony knows it’s his job to introduce us,” James said.

T’Challa laughed, liking him already.

“Of course, this is the same boy who has given me _multiple_ irritating nicknames against my will, so I can’t say I’m surprised,” James continued, lips twitching.

“Wow, rude,” Tony said. “I see how it is. And I’ve already ordered our matching BFF bracelets and everything.”

“You know, I don’t think you’re joking,” James said.

“They have split charms that match up to form a single heart,” Tony said cheerily, making a heart with his hands. “One says BFFs and the other says Forever. Sterling silver, ‘cause I’m classy.”

James looked at T’Challa. “Seriously, what’s the chance he’s kidding?”

“Zero,” T’Challa said, repacking his backpack.

James snorted.

“You will wear it and like it,” Tony said. “Yo, T’Challa, dinner plans, yes/no?”

“Yes,” T’Challa said, because he had a swim team thing. “Why?”

“Nothin’,” Tony said, shrugging easily. “Enjoy your thriving social life! Promise I won’t let Rhodey shit in your bed.”

“Why would he shit in my bed?” T’Challa asked, mystified.

“He won’t, because I won’t let him,” Tony said, while Rhodey made disgruntled noises next to him. “So you don’t have to worry.”

“ _Now_ I’m worried,” T’Challa said, eyeing them both.

“I literally just said you didn’t have to!” Tony said. “Fuck, paranoid much?”

T’Challa sighed, and Tony glanced over at him, all warm brown eyes, a total gut-punch of a look.

“See ya,” Tony said.

T’Challa had to wonder why he hadn’t deserved any irritating nicknames himself.

 

Halfway through breakfast, Sam suddenly asked, “Isn’t that your roommate talking to himself in the corner?”

T’Challa glanced over at the corner table and sighed. “He’s talking to his coffee.”

“His coffee,” Steve said.

“It helps him think,” T’Challa said. “It happens more when he’s sleep deprived.”

“That would explain the pajamas,” Sam said.

T’Challa set down his fork and went over to Tony. “Just to check, you are aware that it’s morning and not the middle of the night, yes?”

“Huh?” Tony said, head jerking up. “Who –” He looked out the window at the sunlit sky. “Huh. How about that.”

“Get some sleep,” T’Challa said. “And stop stealing my clothes.”

Tony looked down at his shirt, pulling it away at the middle of his chest.

“The hat,” T’Challa said, flicking it.

Tony took it off, revealing his mop of bedhead. “It did look a little purple for me,” he admitted. “I thought maybe it was a present.”

“No, Tony,” T’Challa said, because the key to dealing with Tony was patience. “As with everything else you’ve liberated from my dresser, it is mine.”

“This one was an honest mistake,” Tony said.

“You say that every time,” T’Challa said, a smile tugging at his lips. “What’s the big assignment this time?”

“Extra credit for cleaning some unworkable code,” Tony said. “Truly, this major was invented for the sole purpose of messing with my mind.”

“As long as we’re staying humble about it,” T’Challa agreed. “Good thing we’re not developing any god complexes.”

“Who, me?” Tony said, gearing up for his faux-offended act, which T’Challa circumvented by walking away. “You wound me! My heart bleeds! Woe to me!” he called after him.

“Get some sleep!” T’Challa replied without turning around.

He sat back with his friends. “He’s fine,” he said.

“Uh huh,” said Sam, eyebrows raised.

 

“I have been thinking of taking up a new martial art,” Okoye said, face flickering from the spotty Skype connection.

T’Challa raised his eyebrows, feet propped up on his desk as he toyed with some impossible puzzle from Tony’s desk, trying to figure out how to separate the two silver rings from each other. “Two isn’t enough?”

“The instructor at the athletics fair was very convincing,” she said. “Maximum efficiency in self-defense with simultaneous defense and attacking.”

“Which martial art is this?”

“Krav maga,” she said.

“God help us all,” T’Challa muttered.

“Yes,” said Okoye, pleased. “I am also considering teaching basic self-defense for women as an elective course.”

“Are you qualified to do that?”

Okoye gave a contemptuous noise.

“Stupid question,” T’Challa said, smiling. He checked over his shoulder when he heard the door unlocking with a beep, cursing internally as it started to open. Tony wasn’t usually home until later.

Tony had his headphones on, whistling as he entered, though he stopped when he saw Okoye’s image on T’Challa’s computer screen. “Sorry, forgot my laptop,” he said. “I’ll be out in a sec.”

“No problem,” T’Challa said, stomach filling with dread.

Okoye’s gaze on him was not gentle. “T’Challa did not mention –”

“Yes, this is Tony, I should have introduced you earlier,” T’Challa said loudly, cutting her off before she could say anything that would hint at his schoolboy acquaintanceship with Tony. “It is very nice to meet each other.”

Tony raised a single eyebrow. “Weird way to introduce the person you sleep with.”

Fucking Tony. “In the – He means we sleep in the same room,” T’Challa muttered.

“Aw, I think he’s ashamed of me,” Tony cooed. “I can change, I swear!”

“Please leave,” T’Challa said.

Tony cackled as he left.

“You did not mention that your roommate was that white boy you had such an unfortunate crush on all through high school,” Okoye said, crossing her arms. “Shall I hazard a guess why?”

“Don’t say anything,” T’Challa said, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“And you are pretending not to know him? Does he not find that strange?”

“He doesn’t remember me,” T’Challa said, unable to sound anything but disgruntled about this fact.

“Of course he doesn’t,” Okoye said. “He never paid much attention to anything but himself, eh?”

T’Challa gave a noncommittal hum.

Okoye didn’t need to speak for him to feel the full might of her disapproval; her face said it all.

“I know,” T’Challa said. “Do you really think I don’t know all this?”

“I would say at least you don’t make the same mistakes twice, but that’s only because you’re still making the first one,” Okoye said, shaking her head.

“I know,” T’Challa sighed.

 

T’Challa had tried studying in the library, but the proximity and temptation of his friends around had driven him back to his room, where he sat curled up with his notebooks on the massive cushy loveseat Tony had bought.

He liked Tony, but the casually excessive spending habits were a lot to take in sometimes.

After a few hours of this, the door opened and he looked up.

“Oh, jinkies,” Tony said, seeing him. “Will it bother you if I work on my midterm project here?”

T’Challa shook his head, waving his hand around to indicate it was Tony’s room too. “For your Human Computer Interface class?”

“Yeah,” Tony said, opening up his laptop at his desk. “I’d tell you all about it if I didn’t think it would make you change your mind about letting me stay.”

T’Challa smiled slightly.

“What about you?”

“Human Origins,” T’Challa said.

“Oh, you have an actual exam for that, right?” Tony said. “Need me to quiz you?”

T’Challa’s heart skipped a beat, because he was an idiot with low standards. “Maybe after I’ve had more time to study,” he said once he’d mastered himself. “Thanks.”

“Sure,” Tony said, grinning at him. “Catch.”

A bag came flying at him, and T’Challa snatched it out of the air. Cola gummies.

“All yours, I’ve eaten like a pound of them and my stomach is starting to express dissatisfaction with my life choices,” Tony said.

“You’d think you would learn, after last time. What were your words? _Fizzy technicolor vomit_?” T’Challa said.

“I have the memory of a concussed goldfish when it comes to gummy candies,” Tony said solemnly. “It’s a curse.”

T’Challa sighed, eating a few gummies. A comfortable silence settled as they both sank into their respective work.

When his phone rang, T’Challa cursed and went to pick it up. “Sorry,” he said.

Tony didn’t even seem to notice.

Shuri, he saw on the caller-ID. “I’m busy, what do you want?” he asked, picking it up.

“This stupid AI isn’t working right! It’s supposed to feel real guilt and it just keeps losing at rock paper scissors and getting sad about it!”

“And you think I will be able to help you with that?” T’Challa asked, smiling.

“You know I just need someone to vent to,” Shuri said. “What could you possibly be doing that’s so important?”

“Studying for midterms,” T’Challa said patiently, “which is, yes, more important than listening to you whine about some AI that isn’t working.”

Tony’s head snapped up. “Huh?”

“Not you, my sister,” T’Challa said. “She can’t get her AI to –”

Tony snatched his phone out of his hand. “What’s it supposed to be doing?” He listened for a while, then laughed. “You think that’s bad, one time I made a robot to assist me in my workshop and it kept hosing me down with foam every time I tried to solder something.”

T’Challa blinked at his empty hand.

He could hear Shuri’s laugh from across the room, and she started talking faster, her enthusiasm audible in her tone. T’Challa looked between his phone in Tony’s hand back to his notes a few times, so he wasn’t paying enough attention and got smacked in the face by the object Tony lobbed at him.

He picked it up, recognizing Tony’s noise-canceling headphones.

_This might be a while_ , Tony mouthed at him.

T’Challa considered protesting, but hey, if it gave Shuri someone better to talk to, freed T’Challa up to study, _and_ made Tony’s voice go all warm and excited like that? No complaints.

 

The room was quiet, until it wasn’t.

“Shh!” Tony said, snickering, as something gave a loud thunk.

T’Challa stirred.

“Oh, hey, you’re awake!” Tony said. The light turned on, and T’Challa squinted at the distinctly unsteady Tony and Rhodey.

“It’s four in the morning,” T’Challa said, voice gravely.

“Yeah, huge bummer,” Tony said. “So, IHOP?”

T’Challa buried his head in his pillow.

“C’mon, you finished your midterms yesterday, we need to celebrate! With pancakes! Stuffed with cheesecake!” Tony said.

“Are the pancakes stuffed with cheesecake, or are you?” T’Challa said, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Either! Both!”

“You’re feeling exclamatory today,” T’Challa remarked.

“He also finished his midterms,” Rhodey said.

“Why can’t there be hungover celebratory pancakes tomorrow?” T’Challa said. “Is this necessary right now?”

Tony sighed, long and loud. “I appreciate the attempt at logic, and believe me, I wish there were any other way, but no, s’gotta be now. Right now. Pancakes. Bacon. Four flavors of syrup. Unlimited coffee. Them’s be the breaks.”

“Truly, the most irritating person I have ever met,” Rhodey said, but he sounded fond.

T’Challa knew what he meant. “Like high school all over again,” he said under his breath, thinking of all the times he had witness Tony’s shenanigans, how easily he had talked his way into all manners of nonsense with all his idiot friends watching from the sidelines.

“Hm?” Rhodey said.

Tony looked at him curiously.

“Never mind,” T’Challa said. “So where are your keys?”

Four o’clock in the fucking morning after a week of late nights spent studying, but it was all worth it for Tony’s smile.

 

T’Challa’s parents came to pick him up for Thanksgiving, and Tony was so excessively polite T’Challa almost forgot how awkward it was. Sincerity was clearly not a skill he had ever been taught, but etiquette was high on the list. It was difficult to reconcile this polished, broadly smiling good old boy with the douchebag doing key-bumps from the weekend before.

T’Challa had already warned and threatened his parents ahead of time not to give any indication of knowing who Tony was, because he was too far along in this lie and he couldn’t go back now. He could tell his mother was itching to say, but she stayed obligingly quiet about it, and Tony didn’t seem to notice anything odd.

So T’Challa got complacent and stupid and then his mother said, a little too casually, “What are your Thanksgiving plans, Tony?”

“Oh, uh, I think I’ll just stay on campus,” Tony said, rubbing the back of his head. “It’ll be nice here. Quiet.”

T’Challa realized with a sick lurch what was about to happen with seconds to spare. There was no stopping the collision. Ramonda clearly meant the right the wrongs of her past in not reaching out to help Tony more those years before, and T’Challa was going to be dragged along for the ride, like it or not.

It was too late to prevent Tony’s fall from grace entirely, but maybe she could help halt the slide.

“Nonsense,” said Ramonda. “You should come spend it with us. The house will be so empty with Shuri spending it with her cousins, we need another body to fill the space.”

“Oh, that’s really – not necessary, ma’am,” Tony stuttered. “I’m sure you have your own –”

“Believe it or not, American Thanksgiving is hardly a sacred day for us,” Ramonda said dryly.

“She’s not going to let it go, son,” said T’Chaka. “Just say yes.”

“I – T’Challa?” Tony said, a little desperately.

T’Challa shrugged. “You’re on your own, man,” he said. “I know better than to argue with my mother.”

“But – we’re not really… that close,” Tony said, like he was trying to be delicate about it.

“Well then, this will be a chance to get to know each other better,” she said, and Tony sighed and gave up.

 

T’Challa watched Tony from the corner of his eye as they turned the corner onto their street, wanting to see how he would react to the return to his old stomping grounds.

Tony did perk up, and T’Challa’s breath caught in his throat, wondering if this was going to be the moment the proverbial light bulb lit up for him.

“I used to live around here,” Tony said, leaning out the window and looking back over his shoulder at their high school as they passed it.

“Did you?” Ramonda said noncommittally. “How nice.”

“Yeah, a few blocks west of here, where the houses get more spread out,” Tony said, which was a diplomatic way of saying _expensive as hell_. “There was a South African restaurant I really liked on this block.”

Ramonda met T’Challa’s eyes in the rearview and he glared until she looked away. “Oh? Our cafe is on this block – Cafe E Nandi?”

“Yeah, that one!” Tony said, lighting up. “Really, that’s yours? Sick! I lived off the mixed appetizer platter for like, a solid six months.”

“We will be sure to prepare you plenty of koeksisters while you are our guest,” T’Chaka promised.

“Oh shit, there goes my diet,” Tony said.

“Because the literal gallons of coffee are so much healthier,” T’Challa said. “Live a little.”

“Yeah,” Tony said, grinning. “I will.”

 

It was… weird having Tony in his bedroom. T’Challa had thought about it half a hundred times, but only in the realm of fantasy, and usually it moved quickly horizontal without a lot of time spent in the periphery.

In real life, it was a lot more awkward.

Tony dropped his bag on the floor and drew over to T’Challa’s desk, skimming his fingers over the various items on his desk – the carved wooden figurines, the Rubik’s cube, the cup of charcoal pencils next to the dish of smudged, nubby erasers.

He picked up the tube of mango hand lotion, turning it over in his hands. “Just like the one you have at school,” he said.

“I have dry skin,” T’Challa said, and immediately hated himself for it. Why did he say that?

Tony nodded. “It’s really interesting,” he said, setting down the tube and turning to the walls instead, looking up at the mounted tribal mask, the framed replica Hopper, the world map with tacks covering the countries T’Challa had been to. “You get so much insight into someone by seeing their bedroom.”

T’Challa flushed. “We’ve been doing that for months,” he pointed out.

“It’s different,” Tony said. “This is _your_ room.”

“I guess,” T’Challa said. “Why, what’s your room like?” Not that he’d been wondering for years.

“You’re living in it,” Tony said quietly.

“I thought -” T’Challa said, then quieted himself.

If he understood correctly, Tony was saying that their bedroom at Princeton was just a room for T’Challa, but it was a home for Tony. T’Challa had his bedroom in his child home as the insight to his psyche, his cocoon. Tony had nothing else.

Not for the first time, T’Challa ached to ask what had happened to Tony – in tenth grade, yes, but also the years in between.

“We should go to dinner,” Tony said. “Your parents will wonder.”

“Yeah,” T’Challa said.

 

“So Tony,” T’Chaka said, dishing him some lamb stew, “how are you enjoying Princeton?”

“It’s fine,” Tony said.

“Just fine?” Ramonda pressed.

Tony shrugged one shoulder. “It’s all just more of the same. All of the Ivies – and I get that Harvard is the prototype, and that New England prep is its own subgenre of bougie life, but part of me wishes I’d gone to Boulder or Pepperdine instead to get a different view outside my window, you know?”

T’Challa stared at him, strangely irritated that a _just fine_? from Ramonda was enough to open the floodgates when he’d never opened up like that for T’Challa.

Or maybe T’Challa had never even tried the equivalent of a ‘just fine’ with him, and he’d been waiting for the slightest sign of interest all along. That was an unpleasant thought.

“Yes, it has taken us some time to grow accustomed,” Ramonda said. “The architecture, the culture, the weather – very hot in the summer, very cold in the winter –”

“And just _wet_ all spring,” Tony said, laughing.

T’Chaka smiled. “It’s worth it for the snow,” he said. “Even T’Challa enjoys it, though you should have seen him the first time he experienced it.”

Tony looked at T’Challa, who scowled into his food.

“Shuri was running around catching snowflakes in her mouth, and he was shying away and hissing like an angry cat,” Ramonda recalled, laughing.

“Is this necessary?” T’Challa said long-sufferingly.

“ _Yes_ ,” Tony said, captivated.

T’Challa kicked him under the table.

“You’re always so, like, compoised,” Tony said.

“Not a word,” T’Challa said.

“Composed plus poised, keep up,” Tony said. “But it’s nice to see underneath, you know?”

T’Challa shrugged. He’d never really thought about how he came across to Tony specifically.

When he looked up at his mother, she was smiling, hidden and small. T’Chaka’s grin was wider.

“No,” T’Challa told both his parents sternly. “You will not.”

“Maybe later,” T’Chaka told Tony. “In his defense, we do come from a warmer climate.”

“I miss heat,” Tony agreed. “I’m a SoCal boy at heart.”

“Southern California,” T’Challa translated for his parents.

“Ah, endless summer and beaches,” Ramonda said. “After all this time, T’Challa still hates them.”

“Sand,” T’Challa muttered, to Tony’s disbelieving look.

Tony shook his head. “You don’t know what you’re missing, dude. I’m already dreaming of Christmas break in Bali. Just me and the sun and sand and 10,000 Australian tourists. And yeah, maybe a few Indonesians.”

“Just you in Bali? Over Christmas break?” Ramonda said mildly, and T’Challa carefully didn’t meet her eye. “That does sound lovely.”

“Oh yeah,” Tony said, oblivious to her tone. “Dream life.”

“Indeed,” said T’Chaka.

 

T’Challa walked into the bathroom expecting to find Tony brushing his teeth. Inside, he found Tony brushing his teeth – in T’Challa’s pajamas.

Tony was skinnier around the hips than he was, so the basketball shorts that fit T’Challa perfectly were bunched around the waist. The old high school debate shirt that suited T’Challa’s frame like a glove hung loose over his shoulders, making him seem smaller, taking up less space than normal.

“Hey,” Tony said. “Your mom said it would be okay if I borrowed some of your clothes?”

In that moment, T’Challa was struck with the most conflicting sense of lust and regret and irritation and yearning so intense it destabilized him. Tony in his clothes – it was something out of his earliest fantasies, something he’d wanted before he realized what _wanting_ was.

But this wasn’t the Tony of his preteen fantasies, back when he was sweet and young. And it wasn’t the Tony of his teenage fantasies either, rebellious and broken and dangerous, and all the sexier for it.

This was a Tony who shook hands and called T'Challa's parents ma’am and sir even though they told him not to. He listened to his music too loud while T’Challa was trying to study, and he got drunk too often and he thought T’Challa didn’t know about the coke in his sock drawer. He crammed the night before exams and he sang in the shower and the only thing that T’Challa recognized about his younger self was that his smile still didn’t reach his eyes.

He had never been so accessible and at the same time he’d never been so far away, and the fact that he was in T’Challa’s fucking bathroom wearing his pajamas was the most unfair thing T’Challa could imagine.

“Yeah,” T’Challa said. “It’s fine.”

 

A creaking door the next room over woke T’Challa up, and some preternatural instinct prompted him out of bed. He crept down the hallway, following the dark shape moving ahead.

His breath hitched when he followed Tony downstairs and saw him open the outside door, but it turned out he was just lighting a cigarette and standing on the stoop, shivering in the cold as he smoked it.

T’Challa returned back upstairs and came down with both of the blankets on his bed, wrapping one around himself and going outside to offer the other to Tony.

Tony grimaced when he saw him. “Thanks,” he said gruffly, accepting it and cloaking himself with it. “Didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“It’s fine,” T’Challa said. “Can’t sleep?”

“Bout right,” Tony said, blowing out a stream of smoke, starkly white in the night air. The street was still and silent; they were the only people outside. Shit, they may as well have been the only people in the world.

“Tony?” T’Challa said after a long minute.

Tony glanced over at him, lips pursed around the stream of smoke from the cigarette held expertly between two fingers, and T’Challa wanted him so much it took his breath away.

“Why are you here?” T’Challa asked.

Tony quirked his lips. “Took you long enough to ask. I was wondering if you were going to.”

“Of all the people you could spend the holiday with…”

“Like who? Pepper? She has her own family, man, and they fucking love Thanksgiving. I’m not inviting myself to their special day. Or Rhodey? You know that’s not the kind of friendship we have.” Tony gestured with the cigarette. “Frankly, I’m not sure that’s the type of friendship I have with anyone.”

“Except my mother, apparently,” T’Challa said.

Tony snorted. “Right,” he said. “Except your mom.”

“What about your parents?” T’Challa said.

Tony pinned him with a thoughtful look. “You’ve lived with me for three months,” he said. “Tell me what you suspect about my parents.”

“I suspect they’re terrible people,” T’Challa said without really thinking about it.

“Bingo,” Tony said with a sharp smile.

“They don’t love you as much as they should,” T’Challa said. “And they never have. It’s nothing you did.”

Tony looked away, inhaling a deep drag. T’Challa was so sure that expulsion hung on his shoulders like a weight, for all that he spoke so flippantly about it. The first expulsion, that is – the rest of the extensive history with the law were just toppings on the sundae of self-loathing.

“They’re not worth it,” T’Challa said.

“I know that,” Tony said quietly.

But T’Challa thought it might be one thing to know it and another entirely to want to believe it.

“Your parents are supposed to be your first line of support,” Tony said. “They’re supposed to be on your side no matter what – to love you unconditionally, to be the people you turn to when you need help. They’re supposed to be your number one fans. Can you even begin to imagine what it’s like not to have that in your life?”

T’Challa shook his head.

“I just… there’s no one alive who could be well-adjusted with parents who don’t love them,” Tony said, quietly, pained, like the words were being pulled from him. ”There’s no one in the world who could go through this bullshit without thinking – maybe it _was_ me all along. Maybe I’m the problem.”

 “Fuck,” T’Challa said, unsure what else to say, throat closing up in secondhand sympathy.

“God,” Tony said, carding the hand not holding a cigarette through his hair. “You don’t deserve to have this dumped on you. I’m being self-pitying.”

“Of course you’re being self-pitying,” T’Challa said. “That’s because you deserve pity and you won’t let anyone else do it for you.”

Tony laughed a little. “Fair,” he said. He sucked in another drag, then dropped the stub of the cigarette onto the ground. “You’re so lucky, dude. I wish I had parents like yours. You have no idea what I would give.”

“I know I am,” T’Challa said.

“You know, I think you do,” Tony mused aloud. “I like that about you.”

“It’s not unique to me,” T’Challa mumbled, embarrassed. “Annoyingly rebelling against your parents is a white trait.”

Tony laughed, louder. “That’s true,” he said. “If only. I wish that was my fucking problem.”

“You have enough character flaws already, I don’t think you need to add any more,” T’Challa said dryly.

It sounded meaner than he intended, but Tony laughed, taking it as the joke it was. There was a comfortable silence.

Then, “What about you?” Tony said. “What’s T’Challa’s secret?”

“What makes you think I have one?” T’Challa asked.

“You’ve had one since the day I met you, dude,” Tony said. “I just wasn’t sure you were ever going to tell me what.”

T’Challa took a deep breath, let it out slowly. He clenched his hand into a fist at his side and then released it. Then, summoning his strength, he moved forward.

Tony watched him approach with unsettling dark eyes, already so dark in the sunlight and black as pitch in the night. He didn’t move away, benignly expectant even as T’Challa got closer.

His expression only twitched when T’Challa took his wrist, eyes narrowing with confusion as T’Challa guided his hand down and then opening wide when it contacted with the line of his cock through his sleeping shorts – not hard, but halfway there, just from being this close to Tony, seeing him wrapped up in his own blankets outside his own home.

_Oh_ , Tony mouthed.

This was one of his secrets, T’Challa thought. Just… not the only one.

“For me?” Tony said.

T’Challa nodded and dropped his gaze miserably, because there went Tony, and he wouldn’t blame him. He hated those straight guys that assumed their gay roommates and teammates _must_ want to fuck them, but this was different. Tony had been the first person he’d jerked off to in his entire life, and the subject of a hefty majority of the times after that.

And he was going to miss the stupid bastard. All his life Tony had been this enigma, a figure made up of stark black lines that he’d viewed from afar and never really understood. Now Tony was become fleshed out, the bright and shadowed hues alike, because T’Challa was finally seeing him for himself.

And now that was all going to go away. There went seeing adorable, messy-haired Tony trip over his own shit every morning before he’d really woken up. There went Tony doing crunches behind him as he studied, there went Tony’s obnoxious rock music and the reading glasses he hated to wear and the way he got passive-aggressive and mean when he felt cornered.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“It’s okay,” Tony said, from very close up.

T’Challa hitched a breath, and Tony bottled it in with his lips, pressing against him head to foot and _oh_ the boy could kiss. T’Challa’s cock was so hard he could feel his pulse in it. It was torture to break away.

“Tony,” he said, still miserable.

“What?” Tony said, amused.

“I don’t want you to sleep with me because you’re so desperate for someone to love you,” T’Challa said. He wanted Tony to want _him_ , not just someone who wanted him back.

Tony went quiet, then he pulled back. “That’s fair,” he said. “Well you’ve picked a bad weekend to confess, because I’m not really feeling my most poised right now.”

T’Challa nodded, wincing.

“I’ll let you know when I’m feeling less desperate,” Tony said, acid in his voice. “But then, who knows if that will ever happen.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” T’Challa muttered.

“Yes, you did,” Tony said, each word a bullet, and then he turned and stalked back inside.

 

The rest of the weekend was a little awkward.

 

To T’Challa’s surprise, Tony didn’t move out. He waited for it for weeks, but nobody ever mentioned anything to him and over time he expected it less and less.

Tony did, however, turn into a raging douchebag.

“No, no, don’t worry, my roommate’s asleep,” he slurred to the girl he was making out with in the doorway. “He can sleep through anything, it’s cool.”

Leaving T’Challa to listen with a rock-hard erection and a seething resentment as Tony fucked the brains out of the girl in the bed next to him.

In the morning, Tony shot him a slow, cheesy smirk and swaggered to the bathroom, making sure to tilt his head so T’Challa could admire the whompin’ hickey on his neck.

 

Two days later, T’Challa got back to the room and found Tony napping in T’Challa’s bed, wearing T’Challa’s clothes. For a moment, T’Challa could only stand there, frozen with yearning. Then Tony’s eyes fluttered open and he shot him this soft, lazy smile and T’Challa scrambled out of the room so fast he hit his shoulder on the door during his escape.

Tony’s laugh followed him out.

 

Then, devastatingly, T’Challa awoke that night to hear a rustling sound across the room.

No, god, please no -

But Tony was a shameless goddamn exhibitionist and he didn’t like having something he wanted dangled out of his grasp, and T’Challa could hear every goddamn twist of his wrist, the minute hitches of his breath, the way the mattress creaked as his weight shifted on it.

He squeezed his eyes shut and tried as hard as he could, but there was no way to prevent his cock from stiffening in his sleep shorts, hard and going harder as Tony’s breathing went quick and uneven and his pace picked up.

It was even worse then when he’d been fucking a girl in the next bed, because there were no high feminine cries and whimpers, no sounds of her nails scraping only his shoulders. There was only Tony’s hand and his dick and god, T’Challa wasn’t going to jerk off, he _wasn’t_.

But just listening was torture enough, the sounds filling his ears and the images filling his mind, and T’Challa bit his lip bloody when Tony came without even bothering to stifle his throaty moan.

“God, T’Challa,” Tony murmured, and T’Challa _hated_ him.

 

The next day, T’Challa was understandably on edge. He hadn’t gotten great sleep the night before – it took forever for his erection to go down, and every graze of his shorts over it in the meantime was a torment.

He couldn’t concentrate through any of his classes, snappish with his friends at lunch and even quieter than usual at the art studio while everyone else talked and joked around him.

The only reason he actually went to his room to do homework that night was to show Tony he wasn’t going to fold that easily, but he was strung tight with tension the whole time, waiting with bated breath for the door to open and the object of his obsession to step through.

Tony sent him naked pictures instead.

He reached absently for his phone when it vibrated next to him, swiping to open the text without checking who it was from. He choked when Tony’s naked body filled the screen, lounging cat-like in his bed smirking at the camera.

It was a fucking good picture. He wondered who took it.

He stared, completely unable to tear his eyes away, long enough to memorize every shadow and curve. Then he shoved his hand down his shorts and pulled himself off in three long strokes, shaking hard and biting his lip even though there was no one there to hear him.

 

He fell asleep over his homework and dreamed of Tony, and when something brushed against the back of his neck he jerked up with a start, unsure where he was.

“Hey,” Tony said behind him. “You shouldn’t sleep like that, it’s bad for your back.”

For some reason, _this_ was the last straw. Hard enough to resist Tony at his most wicked, impossible when he was being soft for once.

“Ucinga ukuba oku kulula kum?” T’Challa snapped.

Tony jerked back, surprised.

T’Challa struggled to compose himself. “I said, do you think this is easy for me?” he said, calmer though no less intent. “What, do you think I’m doing this because it’s _fun_?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tony said.

“Bullshit,” T’Challa scoffed. “We both know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m talking about how you can’t handle that someone in the tri-state area doesn’t want to have sex with you.”

“But you do want to have sex with me,” Tony said, drawing forward a little.

“Yes, but -” T’Challa struggled for the words. “I’m not _going_ to have sex with you, so practically there’s no difference.”

“Why not?” Tony said. “I don’t get you.”

“Because you only want it because I want you, not because you want me back,” T’Challa said, amazed that Tony needed this explained. “I’m not going to sit here stroking your ego just because you have the unholy love-child of god-awful daddy issues and a body complex the size of Alaska.”

Tony’s expression went stormy. “You can just turn me down, you don’t have to be a jackass about it,” he said.

“I’m trying to! But if I do turn you down, you’re just going to convince yourself I’m doing it because I’m not attracted enough to you,” T’Challa said, frustrated, and he grabbed Tony’s hand again, forcing it down to his cock.

This time, he was rock hard the way only Tony could make him, the ridge of his cock straining the seams of his boxer briefs.

“The point is not whether I’m attracted to you,” T’Challa said. “The point is that you’re only attracted to yourself, and the only reason you’re trying so hard is because you can’t handle being rejected.”

“Fuck you,” Tony said, face going dark with what T’Challa realized belatedly was genuine hurt.

Shit.

“Tony,” T’Challa said.

“No, fuck you,” Tony said. “What, do you really have more to say? Sorry, did I interrupt your screed about what a horrible selfish person I am?” He drew back, clenching his jaw hard. “Please, tell me more, asshole.”

“I’m sorry,” T’Challa said.

“Yeah, I bet,” Tony said, sneering, and stormed out of the room.

 

T’Challa, miserably, swam laps until he felt less terrible about what he’d said. It took a very long time.

 

He came out of the gym at the same time as Tony, who was stuffing his knuckle wrappings into his gym bag. He saw T’Challa and glared, stopping dead and turning to walk the other way.

“Tony,” T’Challa said.

Tony kept walking.

“Please,” T’Challa said softly.

Tony faltered, then stopped, still facing away.

T’Challa closed the distance between them, grabbing the back of Tony’s hoodie. He took a deep breath, feeling dizzy from how much he didn’t want to talk about this. But Tony’s shattered expression had broken him, and all the terrible truths were spilling out from inside.

“I’ve had a crush on you since fucking seventh grade,” he admitted, grateful that Tony still wouldn't turn around. He couldn’t have done it otherwise.

Tony’s shoulders went tense.

“I’ve liked you for years – and believe me, it’s not just because I only see the pretty outside package,” T’Challa said. “I pay attention.”

“You can’t be paying that much attention,” Tony said, voice even. “If you were, you’d know…”

“I’d know why you’re so desperate for people to want you?” T’Challa said. “I do know. I mean, you straight-up told me, but I knew before then.”

Tony tried to shrug off his hand, but T’Challa didn’t let himself be pushed away.

“I know that no one paid attention to you before you got hot,” T’Challa said. “Not your parents and not anyone at school. I know that taught you a lesson you were too young to learn about your worth as a person and as a sex object. I’m sorry I didn’t say anything then.”

“Why didn’t you?” Tony said.

“Because I was shy,” T’Challa whispered. “Why doesn’t anyone? I didn’t know – if I had, I would have…”

Tony didn’t say anything. It was too little, too late, T’Challa knew.

“Tony, you’re literally the only person I’ve ever had a crush on in my entire life,” T’Challa confessed. “Be mad at me for rejecting you if you want, but believe me when I say it’s not a lack of interest.”

“Why do you get to decide if I like you for the right reasons?” Tony said, turning around, fire in his eyes. “I don’t get it – do you have any self-respect? I mean, really? You’ve been crushing on a guy for six years who you don’t trust not to fuck you because he’s so desperate for attention? You get to make that call?”

“You’ve never wanted to before,” T’Challa said. “I pay attention – you’re not subtle when you want someone, I would have noticed.”

Tony inhaled deeply and let it out through his nose. “I knew who you were when I saw you,” he said.

T’Challa’s mouth dropped open.

“I knew that you were T’Challa Udaku – that I moved to your school in seventh grade and that you never thought I was worth talking to no matter how much I tried,” Tony said. “I knew that I was never good enough to be your friend, okay? I knew it.”

“No,” T’Challa said dumbly, shaking his head. “No, that’s – why didn’t you…?”

“Why didn’t _you_?” Tony said, then made an impatient gesture. “Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t want you to know it was me, because I’ve wanted to start my life over since I was 12 and every time I get the chance I fuck it up.”

T’Challa swallowed.

“Do you think I liked who I was when I was young and stupid and lonely in middle school?” Tony said. “And – god, do you think I liked myself in 10th grade when I got fucking expelled for possession of my mother’s Xanax because I couldn’t get through a school day without it? I finally rewrote myself into someone I didn’t hate for once and then you walked in the door and showed me once and for all that I can’t escape it. I will _always_ be that boy.”

“You won’t,” T’Challa said desperately. “I’m always noticing all the ways you’ve changed. Sometimes I hate it because you feel so far away from the person I once knew and I feel like I’m losing something I never had.”

The words poured out of him with such speed that he was breathing heavily when he stopped.

Tony stared at him.

“I wanted you even when you were that boy you hated,” T’Challa said. “I’m proud of you for growing as a person, but don’t convince yourself there’s no one who will miss that version of you, because I do.”

“I was terrible,” Tony said in disbelief.

“I liked you terrible,” T’Challa said, voice cracking with embarrassment. “But I like you even more now.”

Tony just kept staring, enough that T’Challa looked away and scuffed his feet on the ground, blushing hard enough for his face to heat the air around him.

“I noticed you too,” Tony finally said. “I can’t pretend I’ve been crushing on you for six years, but I always did notice you.”

T’Challa looked up at him.

“I used to go to your family’s restaurant for take-out because I hoped I’d see you there and you would say something and we would be friends,” Tony said. “But you never did. Then I came here and you were my roommate and it was great, I thought. I – thought we were getting along.”

“We were,” T’Challa said.

“But then you started hitting me with all these fucking mixed signals,” Tony said, a shade of irritation in his voice. “You kissed me and then you pushed me away, and every time I tried to talk to you about it you shut me down, and it killed me because even when you wanted me I wasn’t good enough for you.”

“No,” T’Challa said, hating himself for letting Tony believe something so fundamentally incorrect for so long. For hurting him so much for his own pride.

“All I could think was that you were ashamed of how much you wanted to fuck me and you wished you didn’t,” Tony said. “I thought… I hoped I could convince you otherwise.”

“Yeah, fucking a girl in the same room as me is a great seduction technique,” T’Challa said dryly.

“I admit that wasn’t my best plan,” Tony said, wincing.

“I wasn’t ashamed,” T’Challa said. “I’m not ashamed to want you. This isn’t about me trying to bury my own feelings for you. It’s just… I like you too much to let you hurt me. That’s all there is to it.”

“I never wanted to,” Tony said.

“I know that now,” T’Challa said softly.

 

“I just got off the phone with your sister,” Ramonda said when she answered the phone.

T’Challa smiled. “What mayhem has she wreaked now?”

“Always a new adventure with that girl,” Ramonda said. “She hacked MIT on their recruitment day. All of their hardware started showing a YouTube video of some rap-battle she was in.”

“Of course.”

“They offered her admission on the spot.”

T’Challa laughed. “Of course.”

“She says they need to start pursuing her now if they want her to go. In her words, she’s going to let them enter a bidding war with Caltech for her.”

T’Challa laughed harder.

“Would you talk to her? She might listen to you,” Ramonda said.

“And say what? Congratulations?” T’Challa said.

Ramonda huffed. “Why are you calling, anyway? Just to make it clear I have raised two unruly children?”

“I was wondering if…” T’Challa hesitated.

Ramonda waited him out.

“Could Tony stay with us over Christmas break?” T’Challa said.

“Oh?” Ramonda said, and he could hear the beaming smile in her voice. “What happened to Bali?”

“The koeksisters,” T’Challa said.

“Of course he can,” Ramonda said. “You can tell him he is welcome anytime.”

“I think he knows that now,” T’Challa said, smiling broadly himself. He looked up when the door opened and Tony came in. “I’ll talk to you later,” he told Ramonda.

“Yes,” she said.

“What are you smiling about, Kit-Kat?” Tony said, cocking his head at him.

“Are you calling me that because I’m so sweet?” T’Challa asked dryly.

“More because Kitty-Cat is too many syllables,” Tony said, “but that too, boo-bear.”

T’Challa rolled his eyes. He’d been asking for this, wanting a nickname of his own.

He realized, with sudden horror, that Tony would be meeting Shuri over Christmas. Good lord. At the very least, T’Challa was keeping him far away from Okoye for his own sanity.

“Try calling me that in public, see how I respond,” T’Challa said.

“Yeah, we’ll see,” Tony said, grinning wide, and oh, how those brown eyes sparkled.


End file.
